


The vanishing of Madison Whitefeather

by Anonymous



Category: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (TV), Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-01 06:13:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13288716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Madison goes missing. It's up to a band of unlikely heroes to find and rescue her.





	The vanishing of Madison Whitefeather

**Author's Note:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

"Look," Valencia said, "I don't care if Brendan is busy elsewhere, I am not buying from his twelve-year-old brother."

"Well," said the kid, "I don't actually have anything to sell you in the first place, and he didn't send that text."

He really took after his mom, and Valencia was about to tell him that, but then she saw Chris making his way over from the bar and she snapped her purse shut.

"Wait," said Tommy. "So maybe we lied to get you here, but we need your help."

"You need my help." She couldn't really believe it--they had four and a half parents between them, plus Tommy's older brother, plus Chris was still friends with all of Josh's other loser friends. They had so many people they could ask, and she was supposed to believe she was their only hope? As if.

"You have a car, right?" said Tommy.

Valencia let her purse swing out as she kicked the chair back into place. She was kind of surprised that even after that, they were dumb enough to try to chase after her, out into the parking lot of Home Base.

"Okay," said Tommy. "We lied, and lying is bad, but Madison's gone missing and we don't know what to do!"

"Madison?"

"My mom's boss's daughter." Chris was still panting and clutching his knees. "Some days we babysit her and she helps us with our math homework, but we waited outside her school for ages and then we received this weird voicemail and I think there's something really wrong!"

Tommy sounded sincere, but even so she said, "Play it." She'd been burned by Proctors before.

The voicemail started off scratchy, like that dumb Blair Witch movie Josh had dragged her to see in high school. Of course, once she'd called it dumb, Josh's friends decided it was a cinematic masterpiece, even though she was pretty sure White Josh secretly agreed with her. She couldn't believe she'd put up with that.

But unlike the actors in that stupid movie, Madison sounded really scared. She said she was hiding. She said she didn't know how she'd gotten there. She said something was hunting her.

"Tommy," she whispered at the end. "Tommy, help me."

"Shit." Valencia probably shouldn't swear around kids, but Tommy's brother sold weed and Tommy's mother was a criminal mastermind, and Chris spent all his free time in a cheesy sports bar, so it's not like she could make them more messed up. "Okay, you two. Get in the car."

-

"Wait," said Tommy, "why are we going east?"

"You heard the message. She said it was sort of like here, except everything was dirty and broken and wrong. And she hasn't been gone long enough to be out of state, so we're looking at somewhere inland."

"Yeah," said Tommy, "but she said she was being stalked by a guy in this weird costume and mask, so that's Hollywood, right?"

Valencia snorted. "Yeah, no, that's everywhere."

"That doesn't sound right."

"Mr. Smith still teach sixth grade history?"

Tommy frowned. "Uh."

"Denise Martinez said on Facebook that he was at a furry convention at the hotel across from her stupid green architecture conference last spring."

"I thought you couldn't stand Denise Martinez," said Chris, who was doing something with his phone.

"If I liked her, I wouldn't follow her on Facebook, now would I?"

"I'm pretty sure that's not how it's supposed to work." He was _twelve._ What did he know? "But if the weirdo in the suit could be anywhere, and all we have is that she's not too far away, and it's kind of gross where she is, then she could be, like, in Barstow or Temecula, and--"

Chris cleared his throat. "You guys? I sent her a text and she sent back a pinned location."

"Oh."

He leaned forward and Valencia took her eyes off the road for a second, and then frowned. 

"Shit," she said, and signaled to turn off the freeway.

"She's in the mountains?" Tommy asked incredulously, then swallowed and looked at Valencia. "You're right, they really are everywhere."

-

They pulled up to a dirt parking lot at the trailhead. "How far is she from here?"

"Uh," said Chris. "One thousand six hundred and ninety seven feet?"

"Which direction?" Valencia strode around to the trunk of her car and pulled out the baseball bat she kept there.

Chris had been squinting at his phone against the sun's glare, but his mouth dropped open when he saw the bat. "What's that for?" he asked, at the same time someone behind Valencia said, "Hey, baby, are you l--"

Valencia whirled and brought the bat to what would have been an inch of the man's crotch if he hadn't leapt out of the way. 

"I'm sorry," she said, with her sweetest smile, "you were saying?"

The man, who was at least twenty years older than her and accompanied by several other men around the same age, stumbled to his feet. They went past, but they walked on the far side of the lot, as far away as they could manage, and she could hear the guy with dust all over his ass mutter something in which "crazy bitch" featured prominently. 

"That was good," said Chris. He sounded surprised. "I didn't know you played baseball."

"I did in high school," said Valencia, and shrugged. "I ended up quitting because it made Josh feel emasculated." She'd actually quit because her teammates kept trying to make out with her, but Chris and Tommy really didn't need to know that. And she had quit basketball because Josh felt it threatened his masculinity and none of his friends would play with her, except Hector, who was surprisingly okay with getting beaten by a girl. "So?"

"So?" said Chris, swallowing. He was still staring at the bat.

"Direction," she said.

He pointed. Valencia slammed the trunk shut and turned to Tommy. "Can you handle these?" she asked, pulling a can of hairspray and a cigarette lighter from her purse.

"Uh," he said, "yeah, but--"

He pointed to a faded picture of Smokey the Bear, the stenciled "Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires."

"In case of emergency," she said, and set out in the direction Chris had pointed. 

It was mostly up and it didn't take long for them to run into a switchback. Rather than climbing the cliff, they kept going along the trail. Tommy kept darting ahead and back, reporting no weird men and no Madison. Chris wasn't that fast a walker even when he wasn't busy comparing the pinned location to the official park map, and Valencia was wearing ankle boots with two-inch heels. (She hadn't planned on a rescue mission in the San Gabriel Mountains when she'd been getting dressed this morning, but maybe from now on she should: these last few months had involved a lot more wandering around looking for people than normal.) "We're getting closer," Chris kept saying, "we're getting closer."

Valencia had to smile at a few families coming down from their hikes. "Middle school scavenger hunt," she said.

They believed her. She had no idea why. 

Finally Chris stopped and pointed. "She's twenty feet that way!"

Valencia and Tommy hurried off the trail, into a flat stretch of mostly rock and dirt and scrub bushes, with eight or nine trees that did not seem to be enjoying the drought. Tommy had the hairspray and the lighter ready to go, and Valencia came charging with the bat, but there was no one there.

"Oh my god," Tommy shouted. "I told you, don't use Apple maps!"

"I didn't," said Chris. He sounded like he was going to cry. "I didn't. The pin is right here. And I used Find Your Friends too!"

Valencia let the bat fall to one side. "It's not your fault," she said, and sat on one of the rocks. "She might have had to move. She might have dropped her phone." Or the man she'd been hiding from had taken it away from her, might have broken it, before--but she didn't say that. These two goobers were still just kids.

"I'm calling her again," said Chris, and Valencia just leaned back in the November sun and let her feet rest while he did so.

And then the phone rang.

Valencia jumped off the rock. The sound was coming from behind her, but there was something weird about it, like the speakers had been damaged. She didn't think Madison had a customized creepy ringtone. There were probably kids out there that did, but they weren't the kinds of kids who would voluntarily hang out with Tommy and Chris at Home Base and do homework.

And then the same girl's voice from the message said, "Chris?"

It was warbled and distorted and Chris stared at his phone in horror and said, "It's not on speaker."

"Chris," said Madison, "where are you?"

"We're at the place you sent us," said Tommy. "But we can't see you."

"Tommy?" Chris had switched it to speaker, and there was a weird sort of doubling to it.

"Madison?"

"Who's that?"

Valencia shook her head. She would have asked Chris to turn off the speaker phone so she could follow the voice, but she needed to ask this question, because clearly neither of the boys would. "You said that the place where you were was very similar, only dark and dirty and wrong. But you're in the mountains?"

"Yes, but they're not-- They're all--"

"Dark, and dirty, and wrong. But from where you are in the mountains right now, can you see a big flat rock, about six feet from one of those crooked trees?"

"Yes?"

"Can you head towards the rock?" she asked, moving towards the sound of the second voice. Madison didn't sound very far away, but she said it was dark--but it wasn't, the dirt on Valencia's boots was bright yellow, and bits of fool's gold sparkled in the rock. "Are you hurt?" she asked, hearing her voice go up, and wishing it hadn't. She needed to project calm and this wasn't projecting calm. "If you're hurt, you should stay where you are and we'll come get you. We're by the rock."

"No, you're not," said Madison. She didn't sound hurt, she sounded scared and confused. "I can see the rock but I can't see you."

Valencia turned back. "What?"

"I'm about twenty feet away from the rock." Valencia looked around the clearing, no longer bothering to follow the far-away sound of Madison's voice. No girl, no phone. She knelt at the edge, looked down at the path below, craned her head back to look up ridges. "And I can't see-- It's dark, but I think I could see someone, and I can't--" She cut off abruptly, and her voice went so quiet that it was only coming out of the phone now. "I think he heard me."

There was an ominous background noise from the phone.

Valencia couldn't see anyone--not Madison, not the man who was stalking her, no one but Chris and Tommy and, in the far distance, some parents with a couple of overexcited small children. She wanted to demand where Madison was, but if the creep was back, she didn't want to make Madison draw his attention. She looked at Chris. Chris looked back, helpless.

And then Tommy gasped and began running around the clearing. He dropped to his knees in front of every tree and started feeling up the trunk. 

"Just trust me on this," he said, as he scurried over to another tree. 

Valencia looked at Chris again, but it wasn't like she had any better ideas. She tightened her grip on the bat.

"Madison!" Tommy yelled suddenly. "Head towards the tree that looks like a question mark--go through it at the bottom--"

Valencia started and went towards him, and the tree, and then she saw that the part that he was touching was sort of purple and sticky and not right, and she looked down at Tommy, who was wide-eyed and pale, and at Chris, who looked just as confused as she felt, and then there was a roar from the phone that shook her bones with its wrongness--

And then something was coming through the tree trunk, and Valencia clutched the bat even harder. But it was just a hand--a small, pale hand, nails painted shell pink, and Tommy grasped that hand and started to pull, as the roaring got louder and louder over the phone. And as a little kid who had to be Madison toppled out of the tree and onto Tommy, something else started to come through.

It was also a hand, if Valencia had to guess. But it was gray and leathery and it was tipped in claws that reached blindly after Madison's shoes. It was also big. And bony. And, as Valencia tried to make sense of it, the thing's head emerged.

Valencia brought the bat down on it, and it started to roar again, and she swung again and again as it struggled out of the tree, raining blows down on its gross alien body as it shrieked like a tea kettle and tried to contort itself away from her, or to grab her. But she had a bat, and it was already on the ground, and after a while she realized it wasn't moving any more, and wasn't making any more sounds.

She looked up and realized Chris and Tommy and Madison were watching her. "It's all in the core," she said. There was slime all over Madison--either from the Inland World she came from or the crossing through the purple sticky stuff in the tree--but there was a different sort of gunk all over her jeans.

"Gross." She wiped her hands off on the back of her shirt, which was still mostly clean. "Madison, are you okay?"

Madison looked up from the crumpled, ichor-splattered mess at Valencia's feet and nodded hesitantly. 

"It's okay. I have a change of clothes in the car."

They didn't run into any other hikers on the way down. Valencia pretended she didn't hear Chris whispering something in which Hector's name featured prominently to Tommy and Madison. Hector had totally blown that all out of proportion anyway.

Valencia got the tarp out of the trunk. It took her a couple of tries to unclench her fingers before she could put the baseball bat down on it. Thankfully a giant SUV had parked half a space away on the right, and another one had been there on the left, so they'd be mostly blocked from view. She got out the emergency bottle of water and rinsed off her hands before picking up the spare clothes and the towels and putting them on the roof of her car.

"Madison?"

Madison walked over to the tarp. Valencia glanced back at the boys and said, "Don't look."

They both turned around really, really fast.

"Thank you," said Madison, after the water bottle was empty, as Valencia was toweling her off. She sounded very, very quiet and tired.

Valencia gave her a small smile and one of the sets of clothes. They were promotional extras from work and way too big on the girl, but they were clean and they were dry. "You can go sit in the car if you want," she said. "We'll get you some food on the way home."

Madison shivered. "Could I--my dad is at the office, I don't--"

"Sure," said Valencia, even though she really didn't want to ever go back to Plimpton, Plimpton and Whitefeather. "We'll take you to your dad."

"Can we turn around now?" Tommy asked.

"No," Valencia snapped. She put Madison's wet hair up in a twist in the towel and the girl climbed into the backseat. Then she pulled on her own set of extras, and a pair of lame slippers, and bundled all the gross clothes and the bat and the empty bottle into the trunk and shut it. "Now you can turn around."

"Why do you even have all that stuff in your car anyway?" asked Tommy.

"There was this thing with Rebecca and--" Just saying her name was like a blow to the solar plexus. "I don't want to talk about it. It's just, you know. Be prepared. And give me my lighter back."

Tommy gave her her lighter back. And her hairspray.

-

They picked up some In-N-Out on the way to Darryl's office. Madison drank her strawberry milkshake and Chris's and then fell asleep with some fries clutched in her hand.

"That thing you did with the trees," said Valencia, after she'd finished her own milkshake, and Tommy was wiping his hands clean with a napkin, which he meekly put back into the bag. "How did you know how to do that?"

He'd been quiet the whole ride, staring out the window as Chris talked to Madison, as they went through the drive-thru, as Madison called up her dad. Valencia would have thought Madison would be the most scared after what had happened to her today, but it looked like she was coping pretty well so far. Tommy, on the other hand, looked like he'd seen a ghost.

He looked at her. Then he looked down at his milkshake. "I." His voice cracked. "My aunt Maxine, sometimes she drinks too much and talks about this creepy shit that happened when she lived in Hellmouth, Indiana as a kid. Mom and Dad always said she was making it up." He shrugged. "Guess she wasn't."

"It saved Madison's life back there," said Valencia.

"Yeah."

They sat in the car for a minute, and then she said, "Chris, wake her up."

Darryl was ecstatic to see her, and didn't even notice she was in an oversized yoga outfit until he'd been hugging her for five minutes straight. 

"She was late to tutor Tommy and Chris," said Valencia. "So they dragged me into it, and it turned out her bus had taken a wrong turn and when she tried to walk back she fell into an open ditch at one of those new developments."

"Oh, no," said Darryl. "Are you okay, my little raspberry cheesecake?"

Madison buried her face in his shoulder. Valencia thought she was ready to fall back asleep, and she didn't entirely blame the kid. She'd been through something scary and now she deserved to be somewhere warm and safe. 

"I don't know what the big deal is," said Nathan. "My parents once forgot me when they weekended in St. Kitt's and I was perfectly fine."

"Uh-huh," said Valencia. For some reason her hand clamped down on Tommy's shoulder.

"I spent four days fending for myself on the boardwalk, living off frozen bananas and watching carnies fight one another," said Nathaniel, sighing deeply. "It built character. Besides, people go missing all the time around here. My man Susan just up and vanished one night, apparently. Stopped paying rent and bills, and it cost her her job at the aquarium, but she probably hit the road for the next great opportunity. It's the American way."

"Uh-huh," said Valencia again. "Well, I have to get these two back home, or this one home and this one to the bar he hangs out at because his parents still think Greg is there to babysit him, so have a nice life."

She smiled at Nathaniel. Chris caught a glimpse of her smile and tried to inch out of arm's reach. She grabbed him and dragged both boys out to the car.

"Okay," she said, starting the car. "Tell me more about Hellhole, Indiana."

"It's Hellmouth."

"It's Indiana."

Tommy rolled his eyes, but then frowned. "I don't know a lot of it," he said. "Just what my aunt told me, and a lot of that doesn't really make sense. But--"

He told them. It was a short drive to Home Base to drop off Chris, but Valencia developed at least one frown line over the course of it.

She parked and hit the child locks.

"Hey!" Chris protested. He wasn't struggling with the door too hard, though. He was eyeing the distance to the bar, as if trying to figure out how fast he could get to somewhere with lights and other people and no monsters once he left the car.

"Tomorrow," said Valencia. "You guys can ask Madison if she wants to come, but I am picking you two up and we're going to find out what the fuck happened to Susan."


End file.
